A study led by ANU Professor Neville Abram, which claims climate is driving clouds south, resulting in less rain reaching Australia’s Southern Coast, has been published in the midst of massive flooding in South Australia. Greens of course blame climate change for the deluge.

The press release;

Australia’s west, south losing vital rain as climate change shifts winds, study finds
Rising greenhouse gases and ozone depletion over the Antarctic are increasingly pushing rain-bearing storm fronts away from Australia’s west and south, according to a new international study.
The research, which involved the Australian National University and 16 other institutions from around the world, has just been published in the Nature Climate Change journal.
It found Southern Ocean westerly winds and associated storms were shifting south, down towards Antarctica, and robbing southern parts of Australia of rain.
ANU Associate Professor Nerilie Abram, the lead Australian researcher, said this had contributed to a decline of more than 20 per cent in winter rainfall in southwestern Australia since the 1970s.
“That band of rainfall that comes in those westerly winds is shifting further south, so closer towards Antarctica,” Dr Abram, from the ANU’s Research School of Earth Sciences and ARC Centre of Excellence for Climate System Science, said.

But:

So what about that flooding? As WUWT recently reported, South Australia is currently experiencing severe flooding and rainfall, and a statewide power blackout, thanks to their dependency on unreliable renewables backed by high voltage interconnectors from other states – above ground interconnector lines which are vulnerable to extreme weather. Greens of course are blaming climate for the intense storm.

Climate change is driving storms like South Australia’sThe storm which has ravaged South Australia is a disturbing preview of what’s likely to come if Australia fails to act on climate change.Storms like the one which knocked out the entire South Australian electricity network yesterday are occurring in a warmer and wetter atmosphere, the Climate Council’s Professor Will Steffen said.“These conditions, driven by climate change, are likely increasing the intensity of storms like the one in South Australia,” he said. …

My desktop computer did something bad last night, and has been taken to the shop for repair and/or potential replacement. In the meantime, blogging is likely to be slow as we share Georgia's laptop, and the IPad. My apologies in advance.

Thursday, September 29, 2016

On Friday, Sept. 30th, Europe's Rosetta spacecraft will deliberately crash land on Comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko, ending the probe's two year mission in orbit around the comet's nucleus. With cameras and other instruments taking data until the last moment, Rosetta will descend into a mysterious region known as Ma'at home to several "active pits," which are spewing jets of gas and dust into space. Rosetta's death plunge could be exciting, indeed. NASA TV will cover the event live starting at 3:15 a.m.PDT. Tune in!

Comey admitted Wednesday that one of Hillary’s lawyers — “it might have been Cheryl Mills” — told Paul Combetta to delete e-mail files from Clinton’s secret server only days after Congress ordered them to be preserved. The FBI director assures us that none of this is obstruction of justice. (Rep. Darrell Issa, incidentally, also revealed that one of the deals — he did not mention which — included immunity, not only for a transaction, but for “destruction” of material.)

Then, at another point, Comey told the committee that the Justice Department agreed to immunity because the FBI didn’t feel like wrangling with lawyers for years. “The FBI judgment was we need to get to that laptop. We need to see what it is,” he explained. “This investigation’s been going on for a year.” So I guess Mills was less than cooperative, yes?

Earlier last week an NBC intern was seen hand delivering a package to Clinton’s campaign headquarters, according to sources. The package was not given to secretarial staff, as would normally happen, but the intern was instead ushered into the personal office of Clinton campaign manager Robert Mook. Members of the Clinton press corps from several media organizations were in attendance at the time, and a reporter from Fox News recognized the intern, but said he was initially confused because the NBC intern was dressed like a Fed Ex employee.

The reporter from Fox questioned campaign staff about the intern, but campaign staff at first claimed ignorance and then claimed that it was just a Fed Ex employee who had already left. No reporters present who had seen the intern dressed as a Fed Ex employee go into Mook’s office saw him leave by the same front entrance. The Fox reporter who recognized the intern also immediately looked outside of the campaign headquarters and noted that there were no Fed Ex vehicles parked outside.

And finaly, the old stand by, the hidden mic ploy. People point to this picture in the Sun. Now cut out the ear, blow it up, and increase the contrast a little and we get:

Hmm. There is something a little funny going on there. Could be a hidden mic, could be a hearing aid, or it could be even be a wire into her brain to shock her when she goes into one of her Parkinson's Disease induced seizures.

Come on guys. She's Lisa Simpson, the SJW, interfering sister who hopes to run your lives. She did her homework, several times over. Having three different conspiracy theory undercuts all of them.

I didn’t think Trump was very good. But I’m reminded of something a consultant once told me: You think those ads for porcelain collector plates are tacky and awful. But the porcelain collector plate people run those ads because they work — with the people who buy porcelain collector plates.

1. She Reportedly Had A Daughter With a Notorious Mexican Drug Lord
2. She Reportedly Threatened to Kill a Judge
3. She’s Really Bad at Geography,
4. She Modeled For Playboy

OK, so she's about as good a presidential candidate as Gary Johnson or Jill Stein. After Clinton raised Machado as evidence for Trumps alleged misogyny, Trump made thinly veiled threats to raise Bill Clinton's woman troubles, and Hillary's attacks on said women as an issue. This brought out Chelsea, who showed great mastery of the talking points:

"My reaction to that is just what my reaction has been kind of every time Trump has gone after my mom or my family, which is that it's a distraction from his inability to talk about what's actually at stake in this election and to offer concrete, comprehensive proposals about the economy or our public school system, or debt-free college, or keeping our country safe and Americans safe here at home and around the world,"

That's the question raised recently over the effort to rid the Anacostia River of the mountains of trash littering its banks and waters.

The Natural Resources Defense Council argues in a lawsuit filed last week that the trash "pollution diet" on which the Anacostia has been for the last six years is destined to fail.

That’s because the plan that directs trash removal efforts for the three Washington, D.C. area jurisdictions in the river's watershed does not set a specific limit on the amount of trash it can handle while maintaining water quality, the environmental nonprofit said in a suit filed Sept. 19.

Rather, the total maximum daily load (TMDL) approved by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency in 2010 only states how much trash must be removed or prevented from entering the heavily urbanized Potomac River tributary each year.

“It doesn’t set a maximum load, so it’s missing the ‘M’ and the ‘L’ in TMDL,” said Becky Hammer, staff attorney with the NRDC’s water program. “The reason a maximum limit is established is so plans like this can have a fixed target for measuring progress. If you don’t have that, you’re left with a paper exercise that lacks real world accountability.”

When it was established, the plan used a baseline estimate of the amount of trash that was entering the river around 2010 — about 1.2 million pounds, or 600 tons. It required the three jurisdictions that drain into the Anacostia -- the District of Columbia and Maryland’s Prince George’s and Montgomery counties -- to remove their share of that trash tally each year. That would, at least in theory, result in a nearly trash-free river.

But the NRDC’s suit argues that the overall estimate of trash entering the river was based on limited surveys, making the figure both inaccurate and quickly outdated as the region’s population grows. A one-time baseline does not account for above-average trash years, Hammer said, when removing a few hundred tons of trash would still leave plenty floating downriver.

Food wrappers, plastic bottles and foam containers floating down the river or collecting on its shores can be hazardous to fish and wildlife and​ impair public recreation in the waters

A classic photo I took of the Anacostia, up at the railroad bridge, where they station a floating barrier to catch the trash that floats up and down the river with the tide. There are parts of the river that would be downright scenic, if it weren't for all the floating trash and trash washed up on the banks. And almost all of it comes from the streets of Washington D.C. Most of it could be solved by getting effective screening on the many outlets from the storm water system of D.C. It would also help ir D.C residents didn't consider the streets to the the trash can of convenience.

“The newspaper collected screen shots of 19 ‘snap’ polls conducted immediately after the debate, and in 17 of them, most respondents said Trump won the debate, often by a wide margin. It isn’t just Drudge and Breitbart; Trump also got more votes than Clinton in instant polls at Time, Slate, Variety and other liberal outlets. I can’t explain it, other than to say that perhaps it tells us more about how people view Hillary Clinton than about how Donald Trump actually performed.”

The State Dept. email scandal keeps on keepin' on. Of course, the State Dept misses court's deadline on Clinton docs. The judge needs to to what he'd do if lawyers for a private firm missed deadlines repeatedly; put someone in jail for contempt. I'm reminded of the story of the Caribbean dictator who ordered three men to carry his grand piano up a flight of stairs. When they said it was too heavy, he shot one, and then the remaining two found the means to move the piano. Too good to check. This Ain't Hell found A Few More “Private” Email Facts that Came to Light. The one that seemed most novel to me was:

One of Clintoon’s longtime aides reputedly possessed a thumbdrive containing an archive of Clintoon’s emails, which she said was “something she happened to have laying around the house.” When the FBI requested she produce it, she was “unable to find it” – purportedly after searching “several times”.

Andrew McCarthy, a former U.S. attorney, puts it this way: “It’s like telling a bank robbery suspect, ‘If you turn over that bag, I’ll give you immunity as to the contents’—which means if the money you robbed is in there, I can’t use it against you.”

Why the courtesy? “If the FBI wanted any other Americans’ laptops, they would just go get them—they wouldn’t get an immunity deal,” Ohio Rep. Jim Jordan told Politico. He’s right. The FBI merely had to seek a subpoena or search warrant. By offering immunity, the FBI exempted the laptops and their emails as potential evidence in a criminal case.

Abedin said, according to FBI documents, she would then access those email accounts via webmail from an unclassified computer system at the State Dept. and print the documents, many of which were classified and top secret, from the largely unprotected webmail portals.

Clinton did not have a computer in her office on Mahogany Row at the State Dept. so she was not able to read timely intelligence unless it was printed out for her, Abedin said. Abedin also said Clinton could not operate the secure State Dept. fax machine installed in her Chappaqua, NY home without assistance.

“And it’s really flooring the hell out of me that he’s supporting a woman that took money from these countries, from these countries that would take him and his friends or his lover or his partner and throw them off a building and kill them,” she said.

Tuesday, September 27, 2016

I broke my long standing rule of never, well hardly ever, watching politicians give speeches and debates. It was amusing and irritating at times. I guess Ace covers my feelings pretty well in his Post-Debate Thread: Final Thoughts

Trump made lots of errors -- I can't believe he brought up taking the oil again, for example -- but Hillary's goal here was to disqualify him.

What did she do? She painted him like every other Republican gets painted in a debate. She did not succeed in extraordinizing him -- making him an extraordinary threat the Republican can not bear.

By repeating the same sorts of attacks lodged at every Republican -- wants to cut taxes, "racist," etc. -- she actually ordinized him.

Trump's demeanor was generally strong and calm. He got rattled a few times. He looked pissy when she was dropping her programmed attack modules on him.

But by and large, he kept it together.

Was he good? No. He wasn't sharp. I know people's jaws were falling open when Trump failed to pounce on her for daring to bring up emails, disclosures, and cybersecurity. He was meh.

Hillary delivered the exact same message that all of her ads are playing around the clock. The viewer really got no new information on that front.

On the other hand, Trump stood up at the podium and kept to his basic message without melting down. (Well, except that "take their oil" like.)

Her goal was to disqualify him; his goal was to seem like an ordinary Republican. Or, at least, ordinary enough to not seem scary (while attempting to seem like a big change agent).

Neither did a very good job. But Trump did a slightly better job at is job than she did at hers.

What was Trump’s basic challenge going into the debate? That he was “not presidential,” without the necessary standing to challenge an experienced politician like Hillary. And yet there he was, side-by-side on stage with her, clearly unintimidated by her.

Did he score any knockout blows? No. Did he persuade any liberals? No. But no one could have reasonably expected such an outcome. Trump committed no great gaffes or blunders, he evaded moderator Lester Holt’s “gotcha” questions and, if at times Trump was “not presidential,” he was not so un-presidential as to disqualify himself in the eyes of any voter who prior to Monday night had considered voting for Trump.

Ross Douthat makes some apt criticism of Trump’s debate performance, but it’s not Harvard-educated pundits who are Trump’s core constituency. This is one of the basic problems with political punditry: Highly educated (and highly ideological) commentators have difficulty imagining how things look to the average voter in Ohio or Florida. Remember how the Bernie Sanders boom during the Democrat primaries caught much of the journalistic world by surprise, in much the same way that Trump’s success in the GOP primaries shocked professional pundits on the Right.

While ignoring these issues, Holt grilled Trump on stop-and-frisk, the birther story, his comments about women, his many bankruptcies, why he hasn’t released his tax returns — and a host of other issues the media sees as unfriendly to the Republican candidate.

Hillary Clinton broke government rules by using a private email server without approval for her work as U.S. secretary of state, an internal government watchdog said on Wednesday.

The long-awaited report by the State Department inspector general was the first official audit of the controversial arrangement to be made public. It was highly critical of Clinton's use of a server in her home, and immediately fueled Republican attacks on Clinton, the Democratic front-runner in an already acrimonious presidential race.

The report, which also found problems in department record-keeping practices before Clinton's tenure, undermined Clinton's earlier defenses of her emails, likely adding to Democratic anxieties about public perceptions of the candidate. A majority of voters say Clinton is dishonest, according to multiple polls.

The report concluded that Clinton would not have been allowed to use the server in her home had she asked the department officials in charge of information security. The report said that staff who later raised concerns were told to keep quiet. Several suspected hacking attempts in 2011 were never reported to department information security officials, in breach of department rules, it said.

Nothing new here, but it's good (and somewhat amazing) to see the State Dept. acknowledge it.

. . .Indeed, imagine what would have happened had Clinton been indicted. The White House would have attempted to maintain the secrecy of the Obama-Clinton e-mails (under Obama’s invocation of a bogus “presidential communications” privilege), but Clinton’s defense lawyers would have demanded the disclosure of the e-mails in order to show that Obama had engaged in the same misconduct, yet only she, not he, was being prosecuted. And as most experienced criminal-law lawyers understand (especially if they’ve read a little Supreme Court case known as United States v. Nixon), it is an argument that Clinton’s lawyers would have won.

In fact, in any other case — i.e., in a case that involved any other unindicted co-conspirator — it would be the Justice Department itself introducing the Obama-Clinton e-mails into evidence.

As noted above, the FBI told Huma Abedin that the name she did not recognize in the e-mail with Clinton was an Obama alias. For the agents to do this ran afoul of investigative protocols. The point of an FBI interview is for the interviewee to provide information to the investigators, not the other way around. If agents give information to potential witnesses, the government gets accused of trumping up the case.

But of course, that’s only a problem if there is actually going to be a case.

According to notes released by the FBI on Friday, Pagliano also told investigators during his Dec. 22 interview that Mills, who now serves as Clinton’s attorney, dismissed concerns he raised in 2009 or 2010 about the then-secretary of state’s use of a personal email server.

The bombshell revelations comes just hours after news broke that the Justice Department granted Mills immunity in exchange for her cooperation with the FBI’s email probe.

Government prosecutes criminals and obtains convictions and prison sentences. If government uses privately run prisons, it must pay these private businesses to house its prisoners. The entity filling the prison therefore has an economic incentive against putting more people in prison. The private business — the one with the "profit motivation" — has no power to create more prisoners. I can see opposing private prisons for other reasons, but Hillary's justification made no sense to me other than a random expression of disgust for business.

As Joan Walsh at the Nation reminds us, “Mitt Romney won the first debate against President Obama… partly because moderator Jim Lehrer played by traditional rules.… Then CNN host Candy Crowley made a different decision in the next debate.” For those who don’t remember, that decision resulted in one of the worst travesties ever committed by a moderator in any political forum. When Obama falsely claimed that he had condemned the attack on our Benghazi consulate as an act of terrorism the day after it occurred, Romney called him on the lie. Crowley then came to Obama’s rescue: “He did call it ‘an act of terror.’”

This “fact-checking real time,” as Walsh approvingly styles it, was nothing more than the reinforcement of what Crowley knew to be a lie when Obama uttered it. But her collusion served its political purpose and forever established her as a partisan hack cut from the same cloth as Dan Rather, who destroyed his own credibility by attempting to sabotage George W. Bush’s reelection campaign with a forged document concerning his National Guard service. Crowley admitted Romney had been right a few months after her candidate was reelected. Several months following that confession, she “resigned” from her job at CNN.

The difference between debates and Super Bowls is that at kickoff, the score is even, 0-0. Tomorrow night at 9, Hillary Clinton starts with at least a 14-0 lead, maybe 17-0. That’s her built-in mainstream media advantage.

Vegas wouldn’t touch this one with a 10-foot pole. It’s fixed.

Whatever happens on Long Island, Hillary will immediately be declared the winner by 98 percent of the press. The headlines are already written, the phony-baloney polls and focus groups are ready to roll.

Time askes Why It’s So Hard for Men to Debate Women. The outdated notion of chivalry. If you want a white knight, knit your own mail coat. Hillary will offer no quarter. Get your digs in in a "nice" way.

It would be more fun if every politician and professional activist group just posted their pre-written, post-debate press releases right now

Call this Operation Who You Gonna Believe, Us or Your Lying Eyes. Hillary Clinton, one of the nation’s most well-known and public women, has had more redefinitions than the Urban Dictionary. Even the introductory paragraph belies the desperation behind the campaign. No, she really is funny and kind and passionate and the most wonderful person you’ve ever met, no matter what you think you know after seeing her in action for 24 years!

“It is the height of hypocrisy for Hillary Clinton to offer an even more dramatic hike in the death tax at the same time she uses exotic tax loopholes reserved for the very wealthy to exempt her Chappaqua estate,” said Jason Miller, a spokesman for Mr. Trump, referring to Mrs. Clinton’s use of residence trusts in New York to lower the value of her taxable estate.

The decision by Blue Cross Blue Shield of Nebraska to leave the Affordable Care Act’s individual insurance marketplace may awaken officials to the need for change, the head of the state’s largest health insurer said Friday.

If not, said Blue Cross CEO Steve Martin, there’s no end in sight for the losses that he said forced the Omaha-based insurance company to remove itself from the exchange for 2017, only hours before the deadline to stay or leave.

Although Blue Cross’ individual exchange policies cover only about 20,000 of its 750,000 customers, those policies have lost $140 million since 2014. If Blue Cross remained in the market, it estimated that the loss could reach $250 million by the end of 2017.

“We cannot take another hit,” Martin said. “We are very hopeful and will work with federal regulators with positive intent and try to be back in the marketplace next year. But if the markets are worse or don’t change, we can’t guarantee we’ll be back.”

How bad is it?

CEO Martin said Blue Cross tries to make a 1 percent profit each year, about $25 million, out of its $2.5 billion annual insurance business, to add to its reserves. That means it sets its prices so it will spend 99 cents for medical care and administrative expenses out of each premium dollar it receives.

But for each dollar collected on the ACA marketplace, Blue Cross has paid out $1.56 in claims, which drove its overall expense to $1.01 per $1, missing its profit goal.

The administration has targeted my generation to sign up for ObamaCare for one reason: We’re healthy. The health-insurance companies selling plans on the law’s exchanges need us to pay a pretty penny in premiums without using much medical care. We’re supposed to subsidize the system so that it stays afloat. That was the plan, anyway. It fell apart when we didn’t sign up in droves like the White House expected.

(Forbes) As many as 20 million Americans soon will be getting a letter from the Internal Revenue Service “suggesting” they sign up for ObamaCare insurance.

Getting a letter from the IRS can be a threatening and nerve-racking experience; it seldom is seen as a suggestion and more of a threat. But at President Obama’s direction, the IRS is “reaching out” to people who paid the tax penalty for not buying mandatory health insurance or who claimed an exemption in hopes of “attracting” more people to sign up for ObamaCare insurance. The government is particularly interested in compliance from healthy young people.

“When we incorporate the full premium for Exchange plans, the smoke clears and we see Exchange coverage is indeed more expensive than employer-sponsored coverage. There ain’t no such thing as a free lunch.”

The latest data from the Census Bureau show that just since President Obama took office, the number of Americans getting health care through a government program -- Medicare, Medicaid, the VA, etc. -- shot up by 32 million (an increase of more than 32%).

In contrast, the number of people getting coverage from private insurers has gone up 11.6 million (a gain of less than 6%).

Via the Volokh Conspiracy, brave operating out of WaPo: The origin of House of Representatives v. Burwell. See how gangster government operates. "Nice law firm you have there; it would be a shame if something happened to it." Read the whole thing.

More than six years after becoming law, the proudest accomplishment of the Obama years is a political burden for Democrats. A recent Gallup poll found that a majority of Americans disapprove of Obamacare. The larger concern for Clinton and her party comes deeper in the numbers. Only 18 percent of Americans believe the Affordable Care Act has helped their families; 80 percent say it has hurt or had no effect. A higher proportion of Americans believe the federal government was behind the 9/11 attacks than believe it has helped them through Obamacare.

Fernández, who was 24, and two other men were found dead after their 32-foot boat was discovered crashed at the entrance of Miami Harbor, said Fish and Wildlife Commission public information officer Lorenzo Veloz.

Coast Guard personnel out on patrol noticed the vessel upside down on the north end of a rocky jetty shortly after 3:15 a.m., Veloz said at a news conference Sunday morning in Miami. Divers recovered two of the bodies under the boat and the third victim was found on the rocks. The names of the two other victims -- also in their 20s -- are being withheld until relatives could be notified. The men were personal friends of Fernandez, Veloz said.

Based on impact evidence and the severity of damage, officials concluded that the boat -- a 32-foot-SeaVee center console model -- hit the rocks at full speed, Veloz said. Fernández was a passenger on the boat, and he was not the owner, Veloz said.

"The boat is a total loss right now from what we can see," Veloz said. "It's bad. There's no other word for it, it's horrible, it's bad, it's bad."

Drugs and alcohol did not appear to be factors in the accident, he said, but he added that investigators had been been unable to get under the overturned wreckage by early Sunday, and autopsies had not yet been done. None of the three victims were wearing life vests, he said.

I'm pretty sure the charts, and most GPSs show the rocks. It's your duty when operating a vessel to know where you are and where the hazards are, and keep them apart.

Pagliano said his colleague asked him to convey the concern to Clinton's inner circle.

When he did so, however, Pagliano said Mills shrugged off the warning, telling Pagliano that "former Secretary [sic] of State had done the same thing, [including] Colin Powell."

For her part, Mills told the FBI that she "may have" discussed federal records retention rules with Pagliano, "but was not sure." She also said she did not recall any conversations with the unknown State Department IT expert about the issue.

Not to mention that Mills has a longstanding and well-deserved reputation in Washington for helping the Clintons dodge investigation after investigation. When Bill and Hillary need a fixer to help them bury the bodies – as they say inside the Beltway – trusty Cheryl Mills has been on call for the last quarter-century.

She played a key role in the Whitewater scandal of the 1990s – and so did James Comey. Fully two decades ago, when Comey was a Senate investigator, he tried to get Mills, then deputy counsel to Bill Clinton’s White House, to hand over relevant documents. Mills went full dog-ate-my-homework, claiming that a burglar had taken the files, leading Comey to unavoidably conclude that she was obstructing his investigation. Mills’ cover-up, the Senate investigators assessed, encompassed “destruction of documents” and “highly improper” behavior.

Such misconduct is a career-ender for normal people in Washington, but not for Cheryl Mills, who over the last several decades has followed the Clintons everywhere they go. Mills has proven her loyalty to Clinton, Inc. time and again, and that loyalty has been rewarded with a pass on prosecution in EmailGate.

Oh, a burglar. How convenient! Powerline asks How's the Cover Up Going Hillary? and offers this old cartoon from Watergate. Actually, the cover up is going pretty well, thanks to Comey.

When Dr. Lisa Bardack was asked to become Hillary Clinton’s personal physician in 2001, it had to have been a crowning moment in the career of the Mt. Kisco internist. Dr. Bardack could have anticipated little downside. She already had the responsibility -- and legal obligation under HIPAA -- to protect the privacy of her patient. She and her staff would have to be especially scrupulous in the case of a senator with presidential ambitions, but this should not have posed a serious problem.Unfortunately, Hillary Clinton corrupts everyone who serves her. And this year Bardack encountered difficulties she could not have foreseen in 2001:

1. Clinton developed serious medical issues.

2. The candidate was being videoed, not only during campaign stops, speeches, townhalls, and the rare press conference, but before and after events -- by individuals with cell phones who were under no obligation to obey orders given to servile journalists to turn off their cameras. . .

Cuban is a sharp fellow, but Flowers is a better than an apt counter-punch. She’s still attractive and camera-ready. (Here’s a photo from 2013.) As Bill Clinton’s former mistress she’s a far more sensational story line. Illicit sex, anyone? Suddenly every Clinton scandal and subsequent coverup are chitchat fodder. Flowers’ personal history calls into question major Clinton campaign themes, to include Hillary’s “I’m for women and Trump’s a sexist” pitch. Compared to Flowers, Cuban is just a guy in a seat.

Yesterday, Jake Tapper fact-checked a claim about Russian nuclear arms made in two different Hillary Clinton campaign ads this year. One of the ads, which was aired thousands of times in Colorado and Virginia back in April, claims Hillary secured “a massive reduction in nuclear weapons.” FactCheck.org looked at that claim at the time and concluded, “the record doesn’t show that Clinton was responsible for ‘securing a massive reduction in nuclear weapons.'”

The Clintons are the epitome of the rules not applying to ruling class. Hillary once rigged a cattle futures investment of $1,000 into a $100,000 profit at 34-trillion-to-1 odds and without consequences—and then added insult to injury by initially not paying taxes on her profits. As Secretary of State, she violated dozens of national security protocols, something that would earn other government employees either jail time or a pink slip. Bill, for his part, has become the highest paid “chancellor” in higher education history, earning nearly $17 million over five years by trading on the influence of his Secretary of State spouse—quite aside from plane rides he took aboard the “Lolita express” that would have earned others the charge of misogyny at the very least.